St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1887-07-14

curse your Cnlluren, ana DldSt WIN
their internal fires generations unborn.
You find these books in the desk of the
school miss, in the trunk of the young
| man, in the steamboat cabin, on the table
| of the hotel reception room. You see a
lightin your child's room late at night
You suddenly go in and say:
''What are you doing."
81 am reading"
''What are you readings'
ga book"
You look at the book; it Is a bad book.
'Where did you get itr'
81 borrowed it.n
Alas, there are always those abroad
| who would like to loan your son or daugh-
ter bad book Everywhere, everywhere
an unclean literature. l charge upon it
the destruction Of 10000 immortal souls,
and bid you this morning wake up to
the magnitude of the theme. I shall take
| all the worlds literature-good novel and
bad, travels, true and false, histories,
faithful and incorrect, legends, beautiful
and monstrous, all tracts, all chronicles,
all epllOgucS, all family, city,
State and N ational librarles-and pile
them up in Il pyramid of literature, and
| then | shall bring to bear upon it some
grand, glorious, infallble, unmistakable
Christian principles. God help me to
speak with reference to my last account,
and God help you to listen.
l charge you, in the first place, to stand
aloof from all books that give false pict-
ures of human life. Life is neither a
tragedy nor farce. Men are not all
either knaves nor heroes. Women are
| neither angels nor furies. And yet, if
you depended upon much of the literature
of the day. you would get the idea that
life, instead of being something earnest,
something practical, is a titful and fan
tastic and extravagant thing. How poor
ly prepared are that young man and wom-
an for the duties of to-day who spent last
night wading through brilliant passages
descriptive of magnificent knavery and
wickedness! The man will be looking all
day long for his heroine, in the tin shop,
by the forge, in the factory, in the count
ing-room, and he will not find her, and he
will be dissatisfied. A man who gives
himself up to the indiscriminate reading
of novels will be nerveless insane, and a
nuisance. He will be fit neither for the
store, nor the shop nor the field.
A woman who gives herself up to the
indiscrimnate reading of novels will be
untitled for the duties of wife, mother,
sister, daughter There she is, hair dis
heveled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale,
hands trembling, bursting into tears at
midnight over the fate of some I'M
fortunate lover; IN the day time, when
she ought to be busy, staring by the half
hour at pothing; biting her finger nails
into the quick. The carpet that was plain
before will be palmer after having wan
dered through a romance all night long
in tesselated halls of castles.
And your Industrious companion
will be more unattractive than
ever now that you have walked
in the romance through parks with plumed
princesses, or lounged in the arbor
with the polished desperate. 0, these
confirmed novel readers They are I'M
fitted for this life, which is tremendous
discipline. They know not how to go
through the furnaces of trial through
which they must pass, and they are un-
fitted for a world where every thing We
gain we achieve by hard, long continuing
and exhaustive work.
Again, abstain from all those books
which, while they have some good things
about them, have also an admixture of
evil. You have read books that had two
elements in the m-the good and the bad.
Which stuck to you? The bad! The heart
the small PARTICLES of gold fall through,
but keeps the great cinders. Once in
awhile there is mind like loadstone,
which, plunged amid steel and brass fl
ngs, gathers up the steel and repels the
brass. But it is generally just the oppo.
site. If you attempt to plunge through a
fence of burrs to get one blackberry, you
will get more burrs than blackberries.
You can not afford to read bad book
however good you are. You say:
"The influence is insignificant"
/ tell you that the scratch Of pin has
sometimes produced the lock-jaw Alas,
if through curiosity, as many do, you pry
into an evil book, your curiosity is as dan.
gerous as that of the man who would take
torch into gunpowder mill merely to
see whether it would blow up or not.
In menagerie in New York, man put
his arm through the bars of black
leopard's cage. The animals hide looked
so sleek, and bright and beautiful. He
just stroked it once. The monster seized
him, and he drew forth hand, torn and
mangled, and bleeding. 0, touch not evil
even with the faintest stroke! Though it
may be glossy and beautiful, touch it not,
lest you pull forth your soul torn and
bleeding under the clutch of the black
leopard.
'sBut," you say, chow can find out
whether book is good or bad without
reading it."
There is always something suspicious
about bad book. l never knew an ex-
ception-something suspicious in the in
dex or style of illustration. This venom
Gus reptile always carries a warning
rattle.
Again, abstain from those books which
are apologetic of crime. 1t is a sad thing
that some of the best and most beautiful
book-blnderies, and some of the finest
rhetoric, have been brought to make sin
attractive. Vice is a horrible thing, any
how. It is born in shame, and dies howl
ing in the darkness. In this world it is
scourged with a whip of scorpions, but
afterward the thunders of Gods wrath
ll,<.<